It's hard to capture a
guy like Backsliders frontman Chip Robinson on record. Unselfconsciously
flailing in cowboy boots and long, stringy hair, he's as likely to dance on the
tops of tables as he is to pass out drunk underneath them. But a performer who
goes through that many ups and downs in a night is also capable of conveying a
broad range of emotion, which Robinson does in a voice that echoes a
slightly-closer-to-the-Mason-Dixon-line Levon Helm. Whether upright or
horizontal, Robinson has led this Chapel Hill roots-rock contingent through
various incarnations since 1991. Under the guidance of former Del Lords
guitarist and ubiquitous roots-rock producer Eric "Roscoe" Ambel, the
Backsliders' second full-length dispenses with the band's "hardcore honky-tonk"
in favor of the more jangly sound that grew out of the South in the '80s. Not
that Southern Lines doesn't rock and twang; "Never Be Your Darling"
chugs like an Exile on Main Street outtake, and pedal steel whines
gently in the background of "Cross Your Heart" and "The Lonely One." But Ambel
also turns Robinson loose on quiet, ghostly ballads, revealing that the
singer's roots indeed run in many different directions.

-- Meredith Ochs

*** Pennywise STRAIGHT AHEAD (Epitaph)

Ten years ago Pennywise had two
things going for them: they brought heavy-metal gallop into their punk rock,
and they sounded a lot like fellow SoCal punks Bad Religion. Today, in the
world of platinum punkers, where bigger bands produce better songs by applying
modern recording techniques to vintage sounds, Pennywise are in danger of being
forgotten, or else remembered as Worse Religion.

Either fate would be a shame, since Straight Ahead does more than just
apply Metallica precision to Bad Religion chord progressions. Pennywise break
up the monotony of punk metal by employing mid-tempos on "My Own Country" and
"Alien" and by shading their tried-and-true thrashers with convincing vocal
harmonies and loud-soft dynamics ("Straight Ahead" and "Greed"). The songs
underneath the fixings and new tempos -- most of which have a bittersweet
hardcore feel characterized by flowing melancholy melodies offset by jerky,
staccato riffs -- show that finally Pennywise aren't following any religion but
their own.

-- Lorne Behrman

**1/2 The London Suede HEAD MUSIC (Nude/Columbia)

The London Suede
never made it to Oasis levels in the US. Both bands peddle the same sort of
old-fashioned Brit-rock, but compared to the Gallagher brothers, singer Brett
Anderson is just too fey for stateside tastes -- and Americans haven't been too
keen on embracing, other than Hanson, anything sexually ambiguous lately.

Suede remain popular in the UK, however, despite the 1994 departure of
guitarist Bernard Butler, who many assumed was the principal architect of
Suede's chunky glam sound. On his second effort with the band, new guitarist
Richard Oakes shows all of Butler's swagger without any of Butler's grandeur --
he's got the balls but not the heart. It adds up to an album with several
terrific rockers -- especially the opener, "Electricity," and "Elephant Man" --
and a few uninspired ballads. Spicing their instrumentation with the odd
electronic embellishment does little to tarnish Suede's muscular sound, and the
deviations from their usual formula, like the "Young Americans"-esque "She's in
Fashion" and the Princy "Savoir Faire," are fun, frothy, and lightweight. In
the end, though, Head Music isn't much more than an attention-grabbing,
entertaining tease.

-- Ben Auburn

*** John Dee Graham SUMMERLAND (New West)

"I'm not in charge, and
that's okay/And I'm not at large, at least not today." That phrase from "God's
Perfect Love" is nearly as upbeat as it gets for John Dee Graham, a former
member of legendary Austin punk band the Skunks and later the country-punk True
Believers (with Alejandro Escovedo). On Summerland, his second solo
outing, his unadorned garage-band sound shifts from high-voltage grinds to soft
songs characterized by a melancholy acoustic guitar spiked with a mewing slide
guitar. Graham's yearning, pack-a-day vocals heave out stark images of the
plains heat, a plane crash, or a gal on a dance floor, evocative details
punctuating stories that have hazy, ambivalent higher meanings. Past Graham
tunes have been recorded by Patty Smyth and others, and he worked with X's John
Doe for a couple of years before Texas called him home. Like Doe's music,
Graham's is a little dark, or at least it comes off that way because of his
raspy voice and the spare approach of his line-up, which includes musicians
associated with Joe Ely and John Mellencamp.

-- Bill Kisliuk

*** Gov't Mule LIVE . . . WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS (Capricorn)

Guitarist Warren Haynes and bassist Allen Woody cut
their teeth jamming in the Allman Brothers Band. With Gov't Mule they still
know how to stretch a tune out live, but they place a higher premium on heavy
volume and metallic thunder. Recorded in Atlanta last New Year's Eve,
Live . . . with a Little Help from Our Friends finds
Haynes, Woody, and drummer Matt Abts jamming with seasoned keyboardists Chuck
Leavell and Bernie Worrell, Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford (who sings on a
14-minute version of Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer"), and former Traffic
sideman Randall Bramblett, and tackling material that ranges from the wistful
("Soulshine") to the gritty ("Mule") to the familiar (Black Sabbath's "War
Pigs" and the Elmore James blues "Look on Yonder Wall"). As you might expect
from a pair of Allman alums, there are some excessive song lengths -- "Afro
Blue," the two-CD set's closer, lasts almost a half-hour. But Gov't Mule have
the improvisational chops to keep things interesting for 29 minutes, and the
talent to keep classic jazz fusion, psychedelia, Delta voodoo, and even a
little folksy balladry all sounding fresh -- and loud.

-- Kandia Crazy Horse

**** Gary Lucas @ PARADISO (Oxygen Music Works)

Sure, Gary Lucas has a
great résumé: Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, his own inventive
rock outfit Gods & Monsters, songwriting collaborations with Jeff Buckley
and others, soundtracks, and a rapidly expanding universe of solo albums and
concerts. But in the land of guitarslingers, you're only as good as your last
work. So here's a great live recording that stakes out his turf as a parcel
extending from the Mississippi Delta to the textural/ambient domain and way out
into space. It's hard to believe that one guitarist has such absolute command
of mud-deep blues fingerpicking and colorful sonic improvisation. Nonetheless,
Lucas blends roots, jazz, rock, and free improv without sacrificing a scrap of
melody or soul. As you listen to Lucas's emotional tear through "Rise Up To Be"
(the music Buckley used for "Grace") and his masterful step-by-step
construction of spontaneous loops, rhythms, and searing melodies in his own
spin down Kraftwerk's "Autobahn," the sheer creative beauty of his playing
becomes undeniable. (Order from 208 West 30th Street, #1025, New York, New York
10001.)

-- Ted Drozdowski

**1/2 Eightball & M.J.G. IN OUR LIFETIME (Suave House/Universal)

Now that Southern hip-hop is taking over the world, maybe Eightball &
M.J.G. (representing Tennessee by way of Houston) can finally get their props.
That's the kind of sentence that usually introduces a veteran group destined to
wallow in obscurity, but these two already have platinum records and a decade's
worth of loyal fans -- their success has been huge, if regionally uneven.

The best track on In Our Lifetime is "Throw Your Hands Up," a dense,
furious, weird number that borrows rappers (OutKast) and a producer (Mr. DJ)
from Atlanta's Organized Noise crew. Most of the album's varied and futuristic
beats are ably supplied by Suave House resident T-Mix, but the real focus is
the rhyming: in a seductive Southern drawl, the fat-and-skinny duo (guess which
one's named "Eightball") tell intricate stories of pimping and fighting and rap
supremacy. Beats and lyrics aside, however, hip-hop heads have come to expect
one thing from Southern rappers: flamboyantly ugly album art. Eightball &
M.J.G.'s past achievements in this field will not soon be forgotten, but the
cover of their new disc is surprisingly sparse -- perhaps a computer swallowed
the real cover art (a digital collage, no doubt) at the last possible minute?

-- Kelefa Sanneh

*** The Bevis Frond VAVONA BURR (Flydaddy)

At the Middle East a year
or so ago, the Bevis Frond's Nick Saloman prefaced a viciously sad song, "Stars
Burn Out," by imploring Pete Townshend to get back on the brandy and to the
business of making great rock and roll. The broadside was, I thought, very Pete
Townshend of him -- right down to the brutally unforgiving, wounded sentiment
of the tune itself.

Those are the kind of perfect moments you live for when you listen to a Bevis
Frond album. The material's almost always worthwhile -- even on the tracks
where you begin to wonder whether maybe, just maybe, those four extra minutes
of "Maggot Brain" jamming aren't entirely necessary. But then there are those
flashes of perfection -- songs so eloquent, raw, and unerring that they make
everything else feel like filler. Here, we're treated to a trio of moving
wounded tracks: "You Just Don't Feel That Way About Me," "Leave a Light On,"
and "In Her Eyes." And Vavona Burr echoes the dozen-plus Bevis Frond
discs that have come before it in at least three other ways: the production's a
little flat; the vocal melodies sound so familiar; and it eclipses anything
Townshend's done since White City.